Freiheit

Freedom is an ambiguous and often misused word. The question is always which freedom is meant. Although a (negative) basic definition, the absence of coercion, runs through all meanings of freedom, this can mean very different things in specific historical situations: from privilege to the "association of free people" (Karl Marx). Freedom is always historically and concretely determined and is also a fleeting phenomenon, not only in theory but also in reality: once freedom has been fought for, it quickly turns into dependency. An answer to why this is the case can be found above all in Hegel and in the tradition of Hegelianism (including Marx's theory). Freedom is therefore not a state, but a process. It is only liberation. Whoever speaks of freedom must therefore primarily speak of its history as a history of liberation, in which it is a permanent process and gains contours, also institutionally.